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Vesper Lynd dies, and then wakes up.
The thing about drowning is that you get very wet.
After she goes insane for a bit, she realizes that a) she can't touch anything, b) no-one can hear her, c) there are other people like her (of the dead spirit variety) but only flicker in before flickering out in a great ball of light.
The most aggravating part is that Vesper is an strict atheist and had once argued with her professor about the existence of heaven and the supernatural and as it turns out, she was wrong.
The memories are fuzzy at first. She remembers her death with stark clarity, but everything else is muddled.
James. James she remembers.
And Yusef.
(The name sparks such an uncontrollable rage that there's a moment when she thinks decades have passed while she screamed, and not just seconds.)
Vesper cries, and screams, and cries for the man who loved her, and the man who she thought felt the same. (She manages to break one vase, and now, isn't that interesting.)
She is always dripping water.
Her memories never really do come back, but only after some time passes does she realize that she's been following James - to Italy, to Haiti, to Bolivia. The words are never loud enough for her to hear unless she focuses everything she has, and the sun is always too bright, the night always too dark.
There is the girl with the tan skin and the white smile and Vesper falls in love with her just barely because there is so much James in her that sometimes they blend into blurred lines and their emotions are the only things she can feel. They're kindred souls, Vesper reflects, and the air around the two of them is just a bit more joyful when they're not in danger.
There is the girl with the short red hair and soft smile and Vesper falls in love with her just barely because she is not made for the life that she is tripping and stumbling into and when she dies she flickers in front of Vesper, dripping black sludge, and she stares at Vesper with a curious and cool air before whispering 'do you have any idea how angry I am at myself?' before she shakes her head wistfully and flickers into light.
(James presses a gun against the women's temple, and whispers to close her eyes, and Vesper dries up against the heat, has the water sucked out of her skin to the point she cracks, but she hugs them both and promises that it's not so bad, and that they'll all be happy together.)
(They don't die, and Vesper hates herself for being disappointed.)
There is Yusef and Vesper screams and rages and when James turns on his heel and leaves, she shatters a glass just to see the man who lied to her jump with fear. He's dragged out in handcuffs, and Vesper wants to kill him, wants to make him suffer, but somehow finds herself trailing behind James as he drops her necklace into the snow.
He's moved on, Vesper realizes.
(Why can't she?)
There is Istanbul.
There is James with a bullet through his shoulder and Vesper's rage as James is strangled. There is James fighting, and then James shot again, and then James falling.
(If she were poetic, she would have wrote something about James, and her, and water. As it is, all that Vesper can think to do is pull James from the water and onto shore, grabbing his hand and pulling.)
(She disappears for a few days, though it feels like seconds, and she tells James quite plainly that she's never doing that for him ever again.)
(She cries, though she doesn't know how, tears mixing with the water constanly dripping down her face, when she watches his expression change to one of shock when he realizes he's alone. No, she thinks and holds him when he can't move. No, love, I'm here.)
There is resurrection, and the tropics, and the home.
After resurrection, there is work.
And with work there is Q.
(Her first impression is not favorable nor kind, and she spends too long berating James for teasing him, and for Q's quick wit, until she realizes that their conversation is nearly identical to James and hers.)
(Vesper is silent after that, but she tucks Q away, for later.)
There is the girl with the tattoo on her wrist, a beretta strapped to her thigh, and a shaking hand and Vesper falls in love with her just barely, stroking her hair as she stares at the sea and when she never sleeps, and when she dies she looks at Vesper and says 'will death bring peace?' and Vesper says, voice distorered by the water that isn't there, 'I have yet to find it' and the women looks towards the man who killed her and sighs and flickers into light.
There is the girl with the bad aim and cheeky grin and Vesper falls in love with her just barely because she is made of money and Vesper is an accountant, and those two things go hand in hand, and Vesper suppresses smiles at James' attempts and her rebuffs and their casual flirting that turns their relationship from lust into friendship and James is lacking in that department, so any attempt is appreciated.
There is the boy with his laptop and a cocky upturn of his lips, and Vesper falls in love with him just barely, though she spends equal amounts being annoyed, with the way his fingers fly over his keyboard and he is like an out of place puzzle piece and yet seamless, and always striving forward for better, and when he makes James smile, he makes Vesper smile, and when James falls a little bit in love, Vesper thinks 'I know the feeling, darling.'
(There is the man with the white hair and deformed face and Vesper twitches with something, because it's not possible that he is looking straight at her, and inclining his head to say hello to her, and it's not possible that he can see her but life clung to him like a disease and that doesn't mean that death never touched him.)
There is M, who is not a girl, but a woman, who Vesper does not love, but accepts, and who James is now without.
M, Emma, Margret, Mary, Maria, Melody, Melissa, M looks at Vesper and says 'so you've been watching over him' and when she looks back to Silva's body and James' tears, she shakes her head.
'One thing right,' M repeats before she flickers into light.
'One thing right,' Vesper mouths and slips her nonexistent hand over Bond's, water sliding over their skin.
(She never did tell James that she loved him.)
(It's when she realizes this, that she's knows that it's time.)
Bond is on the roof (not for the first time) looking out over the rising sun, and Vesper stands next to him in a sundress that is sticking to her body, and hair that is falling out of it's up-do, and she drips-drips-drips.
'I have to move on,' Vesper says, and James sighs, so she pretends that he can hear her because it makes her non-existant heart beat. 'I have to go. But I don't want to leave you. Everyone has always left you.'
Her hand brushes against his cheek, ghosting through his skin, and he shivers because apparently Vesper is cold, so cold.
'I love you James,' Vesper whispers, and she thinks of Moneypenny, and Q, and M that's replaced James' own, and smiles. 'But you're not alone anymore.'
She flickers, ripples really, and the water dries on her skin, and just for a second, Vesper can feel the sun again.
James turns his head, and thinks 'good bye, Vesper.'